Additional work will also ensure that a pension fund should be considered to be a resident of the State in which it is constituted regardless of whether that pension fund benefits from a limited or complete exemption from taxation in that State. This will be done through changes to the OECD Model Tax Convention, to be also finalised in the first part of 2016, that will ensure that outcome for funds that will meet a definition of “recognised pension fund”…

This discussion draft includes draft changes to Articles 3 and 4 of the OECD Model Tax Convention, and to the Commentary on these Articles, that will ensure that a pension fund is considered to be a resident of the State in which it is constituted for the purposes of tax treaties. These changes were discussed by Working Party 1 on Tax Conventions and Related Questions (which is the subgroup of the OECD Committee on Fiscal Affairs in charge of the Model Tax Convention) at its meeting of February 2016; it was then decided to release the changes for public comments.

Comments should be sent by 1April 2016 at the latest by e-mail to taxtreaties@oecd.org in Word format (in order to facilitate their distribution to government officials). They should be addressed to the Tax Treaties, Transfer Pricing and Financial Transactions Division, OECD/CTPA. The discussion draft and the comments received will be discussed at the May meeting of Working Party 1.

Please note that all comments on this discussion draft will be made publicly available. Comments submitted in the name of a collective “grouping” or “coalition”, or by any person submitting comments on behalf of another person or group of persons, should identify all enterprises or individuals who are members of that collective group, or the person(s) on whose behalf the commentator(s) are acting.

The proposals included in this discussion draft do not, at this stage, represent the consensus views of the CFA or its subsidiary bodies but are intended to provide stakeholders with substantive proposals for analysis and comment.